SHELTON — Tuesday night’s Planning and Zoning commission meeting began with a floral arrangement and ended with a standing ovation.

After a decade of service including the last eight as chairwoman, Ruth Parkins’s tenure on the Planning and Zoning Commission has ended — for now.

“It’s bittersweet,” Parkins said at the conclusion of the session. “It wasn’t as sad as I thought it’d be.”

Virginia Harger, a commission member who sat alongside Parkins, told her that she “served the city well...and did excellent, excellent work.”

Parkins acknowledged her fellow commissioners, praising them for the level of respect they’ve shown her and each other: “We’ve always gotten along...We just didn’t always agree.”

Parkins, a 60-year-old mother of two adult daughters, said she will continue to be the city’s representative on the Naugatuck Valley Council of Governments and serve on the executive board of the Shelton Economic Development Corp. and the Valley United Way.

She is employed as the public affairs manager for the Iroquois Pipeline. Recently, she was asked to handle government affairs and community engagement activities for a project they are considering and chairing a committee for a national industry association in Washington.

She said both “will require considerable time and travel.”

Parkins said Shelton is prospering from decisions made by Planning and Zoning during longtime Mayor Mark Lauretti’s administration.

“These decisions -- providing diversity in employment opportunities, housing, shopping and dining -- have helped to keep our taxes stable and have made Shelton a very desirable community,” she said.

She said she was proud of the commission’s accomplishments in making Avalon Shelton and The Mark on Bridgeport — two apartment complexes — and The Market Place, which includes Big Y on Bridgeport Avenue, come to fruition.

Parkins’s tenure ended as a result of the Nov. 7 election, when she finished third among Republicans seeking a spot on the commission when the city charter limits the number of a single party’s seats during the election to two.

As a result, Jimmy Tickey, an incumbent Democrat and an employee of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, grabbed the last spot with 3,828 votes some 163 fewer than Parkins.

She also had her critics, who were at the meeting to see her off.

Parkins supported the massive Towne Center at Shelter Ridge project which will encompass 121 acres of current forests off Bridgeport Avenue. That approval led members of Save Our Shelton to create a political action committee and target her during the election.

“It was a very gratifying meeting for our group. Shelton needs independent thinkers on our P&Z who care about the resident's needs over developers,” Magner said. “We were able to give voters a choice. And they made their voices heard on Nov. 7. The ‘silent majority’ spoke up when it really mattered.”

Demonstrations and placards have been a Save Our Shelton staple at most of the commission meetings during the past 18 months.

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Anthony Simonetti, the city’s Republican town chairman, said Parkins’s defeat will “be a big loss to the commission... She was talented, intelligent and spent an enormous amount of time studying the issues.”

Prior to their Nov. 29 meeting, the commission — which consists of four Republicans, two Democrats and an alternate from each party — will vote on a new chairman.